Toilet training or potty training (potty and toilet shall hereinafter be considered reversible terms) has been a concern of parents since the beginning of time. Toilet training, of course, helps a child achieve control his/her excretory systems so that the child no longer needs as much care and attention during toilet activities, so that the child may eliminate the use of diapers and so that the child may have increased personal hygiene. However, the process of training a child in toilet activities often frustrates even the most patient of parents. A primary reason for this is that the concept of controlled toilet activities is a radical departure from the child's previous approach to extractatory functions. Frustration is further compounded by the child's limited verbal skills so that it is difficult for the parent to communicate to the child the toilet technique.
In the past, a child was typically introduced to the idea of potty training by watching adults use the toilet. One system for training a child suggested that the child be placed on the toilet every fifteen minutes for a period of five minutes each. At such time that the child eliminates either feces or urine the parent praises the child in order to reinforce use of the toilet. Another system relies upon the parents observing warning signals of an intending bowel movement with such signals being grunting or straining by the child or the child turning red in the face. When such warning signals are observed, the parent places the child on the potty to complete the excretion. In either event, the child's toilet may be an adult toilet, a specially adapted seat to place on an adult toilet, or a special "child size" toilet.
Few children toilet train in a matter of days or even weeks, and toilet training usually takes a period measured in months. The lengths of training period often has to do with a child's lack of interest in sitting on the potty, especially since sitting on the potty takes the child away from other toys and entertainment. To counteract this, some training systems encourage the parent to place one or more floatable toys in the toilet to entertain the child. These toys are both inconvenient and somewhat unsanitary since they come in contact with urine and fecal matter. This is especially unpleasant and unsanitary since the parent must remove the toys from the fouled water prior to flushing the toilet.
To avoid some of the drawbacks of the previous systems and to make a toilet training experience more entertaining to a child, a new and useful toilet training system was developed as set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,285,540, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and issued to Lawrence Putz on Feb. 15, 1994. In this toilet training system, decorated sheets which are fabricated from material that dissolves upon contact with urine are provided so that these sheets may be placed in a toilet in such a position that, when the child eliminates urine in the toilet, the sheet dissolves. A chart is provided for recording a child's use of the toilet for elimination, and instructions are provided first for positioning one of the dissolvable sheets and secondly for recording the child's elimination of urine on the chart. Accordingly, the child becomes more interested in using the toilet because the child causes the sheet to disappear by eliminating urine in the toilet. This, of course, is more exciting to the child and, with the use of the chart, makes the toilet experience a pleasing, interactive exercise with the parent.
While the toilet training system described in the Putz U.S. Pat. No. '540 has been recognized as an advantageous approach in teaching a child toilet techniques, there is still remains some communication barrier between the parent and child even with this system. Accordingly, there is still a need for potty training system which can be used alone or in combination with the toilet training system described in the Putz invention, which can help a parent communicate the concept of toilet activities to a child even absent comprehensive verbal skills.